Upon Many Waters
by stefanie bean
Summary: Meg and the Phantom escape from Paris after the Opera Populaire disaster. Complete.
1. Prologue

_**Author's Note**: Part of this Prologue appeared in the story **Swan Song**, with some alterations. _

"_I'm guided by a signal in the heavens  
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin  
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons  
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin_."

- Leonard Cohen

**Prologue**

I heard your groans of anguish and the shattering of glass, but by the time I reached the room at the top of the stairs with the great swan bed, you had vanished. On the table lay your white mask.

I picked up your mask and looked at it for a moment in wonder. At first its shininess looked like ceramic, but it was actually glossy, polished leather. This was on your face, I thought, and I am going to see that face no matter what. Christine left with Raoul in the boat. That could mean only one thing, that she left you. But where did you go?

My head swam with possibilities, all tumbling one atop the other. I couldn't see you, but I knew you were there, in the same way I knew when you crept in the rafters. Where are you? I called out, silently. I could hear the shouts and curses of the mob. Oh help him, please, someone. Please help him.

Glass covered the stone floor. Why was there so much in front of that curtain, where there seemed to be no mirror? Something pulled me toward the thick red velvet drape. and I ran toward it. He's behind there, I thought, not knowing how I knew, but knowing I was right.

A sound came from behind the curtain, a curse, followed by one thump, then another, and then the sound of boots receding into the distance. I flung the curtain aside and peered into a long, dim tunnel lit by a few tiny blue gas flames. Then, like an arrow that flies straight into the heart, I ran down that murky corridor, kicking up shards as I went.

The black distance of tunnel seemed to be endless, and up ahead I heard the scrapes of stone upon stone. Faster I went through the dim light, until in surprise and frustration I came to a blind end, and you had gone.

My heart filled to bursting. To come all this way, only to lose you once more, to lose you like the shadow you were. There was some trap door, some secret passage somewhere, but where? In frustration, I pounded helplessly in all three directions around me.

Then strong arms grabbed me and pulled me through a crack in the wall that opened suddenly. It snapped shut with a click, and there stood before me with your face all on fire and wet with tears, your shirt sticking to you with sweat.

You leaned your head against the rough stone of the tiny, narrow corridor and hid your face with your hand. Gently I grasped your hand and lowered it, taking your hand tentatively in mind, waiting for you to snatch yours away. Your warm muscular hand pulled me down the corridor. Mine felt so small, clasped inside your rough, dry palm.

My boots clicked on the stone floor. Clicks changed to thuds as we crossed onto a wooden walkway. In places boards were broken or loose and I was grateful for that night's breech role, because in trousers and boots I could pick my way over the bad spots easily. The walkway turned into a narrow bridge, and and down beneath I noticed a deep gouged pit of three or four meters, full of broken pieces of stone. Suddenly I quailed, imagining being dashed to pieces on the stone below.

You turned to me with a look of anguish. I looked over the edge, resolutely, and then looked at your mask. Hateful thing of lies, I thought, and I threw it down into the rubble below. It bounced several times, then landed among the broken stones. I turned my face up to yours and flipped back my long hair, and with your hand in mine, we walked across the bridge.

When we reached the other side, you pulled a knife from your pocket, and a flicker of fear went through me. Were you going to cut me for throwing your mask away? Instead you cut the ropes of the walkway, and the bridge collapsed into the pit below.

You started to walk away quickly, and I followed as fast as I could. You linked your arm in mind and through a maze of tiny passages we slunk. Over and under, farther and farther down the passage went, until at last we came to a rough wall made of the natural stone under the earth. You climbed the wall, hooking your feet into the rough edges. When you had ascended about two meters you reached your hand down to me, and up I went as well.

We crept on a narrow ledge above until we came to a small cleft in the stone, and through it you squeezed into the darkness. Then your hand came through the opening, and I took it, feeling my way in entire blackness with only your hand pulling me through.

Cold air played over my face, and I heard you strike a match. The chamber filled with soft yellow light, and we found ourselves in a natural cave, fit with a cot, a cupboard, a few shelves, and candles. You lit one candle, and then another, until I could see you clearly, and then you sat on the cot and buried your head in your arms.

Slowly I came over to you, and sat down. I knew you could not send me away - how could I get back over the stone pit? Where would I go from here? In the eyes of the law you were a murderer, and by being with you, that made me a murderer too, or at least the helper of one. However, you did not send me away. I thought that over and over to myself, you did not send me away.

I put my arm around your shoulder, and you started to shake, slowly at first, and then more, until you sobbed. The sounds were terrible to hear. I thought that you would sit there locked inside yourself lamenting forever, but under the gentle pressure of my arms you unlocked yours, and lay your head upon my breast, still sobbing.

Your wet shirt and face soon soaked mine, and then my tears joined yours as you held me like a rocking, grieving child. I stroked the coarse unevenness of your hair, and you put your hands on my own hair and wiped your tears with it. Gradually your keening stopped, but you still pressed your face into my bosom.

If this cave collapsed on me in this instant, I could not be happier. It seemed dreadful in a way, to reap so much happiness from your bitter sorrow, but there it was. I held onto your head and soon you relaxed into me, leaning your weight against my whole body, as I rocked you on the narrow cot many meters under the earth.

Then you lifted your head, and looked me full in the face. I had only seen your disfigurement from a distance, back on the stage in the moment before you and Christine disappeared into the trap door of fire. I put my hand on your blighted side and you winced, but I softly stroked your face and made shusshing noises. Then you let me touch it, and my fingers went over it again and again, the red and ravaged hairless skin; the ragged and uneven hair; the ear bent and malformed; the twisted flesh around your eye.

You looked at me with sadness almost too deep to bear, and there was nothing to do but fold you all in my arms, and place my face next to the side of yours, the side that caused you such pain.

You trembled less than before, because no one can cry forever. You lay down on the cot, and I could feel the exhaustion in the muscles of your back and arms. I drew you to me, and once again, your face rested on my breast, your arms enclosed my back and shoulders. Slowly I rubbed your shoulders the way my mother used to ease the cramping and burning from my legs, when they pained from too much exertion.

One of the candles burned down, and you slept.

But not I. I watched the candlelight play over the cave walls and thought, I can never sleep again. If I do, I will lose some of this moment, because there is no guarantee that any more moments will be there to follow it. There is just this one, and it is almost beyond my belief, beyond my ability to believe. Yet here you are, asleep in my arms, your chest rising and falling against my stomach, your head nestled between my breasts and your arms close around me, your head resting on my arm. Each moment you slept bestowed upon me another minute with you, and another, and I clung to you until at last I too fell into darkness.

When I awoke, the second candle had burned out entirely, and it was like blindness, because there was nothing at all in front of my eyes but utter and entire black. Nevertheless, in my arms you rested warm and strong, and I could feel from your small movements that you were awake. We shifted a little, and then your hand came up to the side of my face, and drew me toward you blindly. I felt your mouth on my eye, then my nose and cheek, and then down to where it brushed over mine in the dark.

"Thank you," you said in a soft hoarse whisper.

In answer, I kissed you full on the mouth. I was a virgin, not only down below but up above as well, and at seventeen had never been kissed by man or boy. If he pulls away, I thought, don't let me die. Please don't let me die of sorrow right here, because he may not want me; he still loves Christine, and a thousand similar demons stabbed my heart. If he pulls away, I still have had the gift of his sleep in my arms.

But then your mouth moved over mine in a hesitant round of gentle exploration, and so we went, back and forth, forming a circle dance of kissing, now straight ahead, now circling around, now straight ahead again, but always coming back to that sweet center.

When I watched you sing on stage in the bridge scene of _Don Juan Triumphant_, I thought I could be no fuller of heat than that, but I had much to learn in that unrelenting darkness as your rough thick hands went over my body. Then you stopped kissing me, and lay quietly for a few moments in the darkness that veiled your expression. I could feel your thoughts, as if they seeped through your skin into mine.

He's deciding, I knew at once. He is not going to take me simply for pleasure. If he does take me, it will be for good, and there will be no turning back. Once he sets his mind to something, he does it, for good or ill.

Finally, you spoke, and your words came out low and a little harsh in the darkness. "Is this what you want, Meg? I don't what will become of us. Are you sure?"

I put my hand on your chest, and could not tell the difference between the pounding of my own heart, and the massive movements of that great one within the edifice of your muscle and flesh and bone.

Then I breathed my swan song, one word, "Yes," and everything that I had known, everything I had been up until that point died on a narrow cot in the bowels of Paris, under the pressing weight of the earth, of the darkness, and of the fierce wild strength of the body of the man, my man.

(_To be continued_.)


	2. Meg's Last Trouser Role

**Meg's Last Trouser Role**

In the cave under the bowels of the fifth cellar we made ready to travel, and you cut off all my hair. You brought the long sharp shears intimate as love up to my scalp and clipped away until there was little left of the long mass that had wiped your tears. I had steeled myself for you to send me away, to put me out, perhaps even to strangle me, but not for this.

I tried not to cry, but my lip trembled and tears stood in my eyes. When I was little, my aunt had become a nun, and I asked my mother if they really were going to cut off all her hair, and she said yes, Meg, she's a bride of Christ now. Bride of Christ or bride of the devil, why don't we get to keep our hair?

"Why are you doing this?" I said as you coolly clipped away. "I thought we were through with masks and disguises."

"We have to get out of France," you said. "Think of it as your last acting role."

"Where are we going?"

"To America. To New York." You considered for a moment. "Do you speak any English?"

"Some," I said, and you looked surprised and pleased. "Christine and I … I spent many of my summers in Wales with a dance mistress, a friend of my mother's."

"Yes, she did know some English," and then you stopped dead, looking away, embarrassed. "That's excellent," you said briefly, and began packing some old, stained duffel bags.

I held the heavy gold weight of my hair on my lap and stared at it, suffering but not wanting to show it. "My head's cold," I said in a choked voice, and you cupped my bare head momentarily. Your hands were so warm, and my scalp so naked, that a few tears leaked out of my eyes anyway. I wiped them away with the tail of my shirt.

"My head's cold," I repeated, like a child.

"Here," and you handed me a cap, just like the ones workers wear while cutting wood or breaking stone.

My face and lips, thighs and bottom were chafed from yours on mine. As you put the cap on my head you kissed me full and open on the mouth. Your beard scratched me, two days growth at least. It was hard to tell, because down here beneath the lake there was no night or morning.

I broke our kiss. "How can you stand that? I'm so ugly," I sniffed.

You looked at me in astonishment. "How can you stand _me_?"

"But that's different," I stammered. "You're beautiful."

You said with sharp and sudden bitterness, "Don't toy with me."

"Never. I will never toy with you, or lie to you. You have my life in your hands. And you are beautiful."

"You'll forgive me if I don't believe you."

I swallowed and said, "I thought I showed you with my body that you were."

Even in the candlelight I could tell that your face darkened, either with embarrassment or pleasure, or maybe both. You rested your head on my knee, and I stroked your face on those spots that the world would say were the worst. Your stubbly chin was scratchy, but up there the skin was tender and soft.

"This is beautiful," I said, "because it's yours. Because it's part of you." I rubbed the thick brown of your unshaven beard, and you closed your eyes under the soft circular movements. "You can't cut a man into parts, saying this is nice, this is ugly, or this part's good, or this part's bad. It's you I love. All of you, together."

We sat there quietly for some time as the candle threw our black shadows against the wall, and they moved and danced together, even though we remained still.

"Come on," you said, "we need to get out of here." You were already dressed in shabby and shapeless clothes, and you threw our travelling bags onto the cot, still sunken with the impression of our bodies. I didn't need to ask; as you said, you always had your escape routes ready. This was something you had planned for some time.

"What shall I do?" I asked.

"Put on your trousers and boots, but not the blouse. Here's one of my shirts, yes, it's quite large, but tuck it in and roll it up." Then you looked at me critically, but laced with appreciation. "We'll have to bind you."

You took my blouse from my _Don Juan Triumphant_ costume and cut it into one long strip. Gently you said, "May I?" as you lifted my short chemise. Even the candle stopped its flicker as your hands hovered over my breasts, not touching them, and when the heat of your hands reached my skin, I couldn't help the crinkling, stiffening reaction. I turned my face away in embarrassment.

Then you bound me, tightly, flattening me out as best you could. I throbbed with pain; I would have let you shave me bald as an egg and not said a word about it, anything but this. I swallowed it, however, as your plan came clear. Delicately you buttoned me into your oversize flannel shirt, and there I was, a short but passable youth.

"Keep your overcoat on," you said as a small smile flickered in your eyes, "and keep your arms as well as your fingers crossed."

You tamed your rough, wild hair down into a grey smoothness with salve, and put some flesh-toned makeup on your face. It settled into your skin and left sharp lines. Suddenly you looked like an older man, an old one, even.

"Here's the play, and I'm the director. I want you to listen to me and do exactly as I say, no questions. We're an uncle and nephew en route to England, to look for work in the factories of Liverpool."

"Oh, I've played a boy more than once."

"No, you haven't. You've played a trouser role, which is something entirely different. Girls in breeches strut around the stage, showing off their legs. Everyone knows they're girls; that's why they go to see them. But a boy is different. Girls look at the world with eyes cast down. Boys are insolent; they look the world right in the face. Girls sigh, and heave, and show feelings in their faces. Boys make their faces as blank as possible. You have to be a little arrogant, but not too much.

"Follow my instructions exactly, and unless you absolutely have to, don't speak, because you really don't sound like a boy. Nonetheless, you'll do."

We slipped out of the Opera Populaire unnoticed. By the sun it looked to be mid-morning of a clear day. On the way to the dock, you bought a copy of _Le Temps_ and while we waited for our barge, you scanned it leisurely. My eyes kept darting toward it. I knew what you were looking for.

Under your voice you said, "The key to reading a newspaper when you're out is to do it casually. Never grab it and look directly for something. First scan the horse racing reports, or the gossip columns, then work your way around to what you're looking for."

"You sound like a spy," I remarked. When you spoke, your lips barely moved, or not at all.

"Stealth is my life. But I told you not to talk," and then you turned away and read for a long time before handing the paper to me.

"Watch your face; try not to show so much feeling," you said. "I'm going to show you an article. Read it, but don't react to it. If you don't think you can keep your face still, shake your head 'no,' and I won't give it to you. But I think you'll want to see it."

He off-handedly gave me the broadsheet, and there it was on the second page: "Investigators Search for Mystery Actor in Chandelier Crash." My mind froze. I could barely take it in. "Hundreds of casualties," I read silently, "mostly injuries sustained due to trampling, as opera patrons rushed for the doors." "By an act of God, no mortalities."

A Captain Edouard Paschall was on indefinite suspension from the police force for deliberately disobeying orders, telling his subordinates to unbar the doors that had originally been locked at the request of the Opera Populaire management.

"Madness," I whispered. "Just madness. Barring the doors. It would have killed them all."

"Quiet," you hissed. "Don't speak, and don't react."

I read on. "The search is still underway for the unknown actor who assaulted and took the place of star tenor Ubaldo Piangi, of Florence, Italy. Piangi, recovering from an attempted strangulation by his unseen assailant, told _Le Temps_ that he owed his survival to his 'thick skull and even thicker neck.'"

The barges slid in and out of the harbor, and a few fishing boats unloaded the morning's catch. The scene went grey before my eyes, and I must have swayed, for you squeezed my arm roughly and harshly whispered with unmoving lips, "Pull yourself together, and _don't speak_."

I nodded, and read further down the page, "Police interviews with soprano Christine Daae were inconclusive, as were those with her rescuer, the Vicomte Raoul deChagny. While it at first appeared that Mlle. Daae was kidnapped from the stage, police concluded that a trap door malfunction plunged both her and the unknown tenor into the crawlspace below the stage.

"The Vicomte claimed that he found Mademoiselle Daae stunned but unharmed, wandering in the lake underneath the Opera Populaire. He told investigators that blood on his shirt was from an old wound of some weeks before, which was corroborated by medical examination. Mlle. Daae, resting at the Vicomte's _chateau_ outside Melun, claimed that she had swooned and could remember nothing of her ordeal, and could offer no explanation as to why she was found wearing a wedding dress."

A wedding dress? Oh, dear God.

"Police had hoped to find some indication of the mysterious assailant's identity in the rooms found on the shore of the Opera Populaire's lake, but most unfortunately, the mob had either burned or removed most of the contents before police arrived. The remaining theater props and some sketches were taken as evidence."

I'll play it your way, I thought. I won't say another word until we're en route to New York. But this isn't going to rest between us. You can throw me in the Atlantic if you like, but before that, you're going to tell me what happened.

We sat silently on the barge as it slowly made its way up the Seine to LeHavre. I asked for some water and you cuffed me roughly, saying loud enough for the sailors nearby to hear, "Don't bother me, boy. Wait till we get to port." My eyes stung, but it was acting, just acting, I hoped.

We hauled our duffels out onto the great port of LeHavre, and there we saw the sea. I breathed, "The Channel is so beautiful," and instead of roughly saying, "Shut up" or shoving me, you came close and said with your unmoving lips, "That's a fish pond compared to the Atlantic." When had you seen the Atlantic? I wondered, but dared not ask.

I stored up all my questions inside my heart as we walked the docks that day. The steamer to Liverpool would leave the next morning. We sat for awhile in a filthy tavern where men spit on the floor and cursed, and where the massively fat bartender dragged two quarrelling men to his chest and smacked their heads together. We ate our supper of lentil and onion stew in silence, and I poked at the pieces of indistinct fatty meat.

"Give them here. You're too damn picky," you said roughly, and ate them yourself.

Later, we walked over the port side of the city until nightfall, and behind an abandoned stable, in a garden overgrown with weeds and full of broken chairs, trash barrels, and smashed clay pots, we nestled against each other for the night, covered by the rough blanket you'd taken from your cot in the cave.

My chest pained me, worse than a corset, and when your hands reached around me to pull me closer, I asked quietly, "Can't I untie at least for the night?"

"No," you said, "I'm not taking any chances. Try to bear it," and then I felt that I could bear anything, as you tenderly rubbed my back and hips and flanks until I slept.

_(To be continued)_


	3. The Devil's Bride

**The Devil's Bride**

It took half a day to get to Liverpool, as there were few ports of call. You bundled me into a corner of a bunk in the men's barracks, wrapped up in a cloak so that I looked like a small black package. "Stay here," you said. "There are a lot of people coming and going on board, and the fewer who see you, the better." When one or other of the men asked about "the boy," all you said was "Seasick," in your gruffest voice, and they moved away.

In the blue afternoon, we saw Liverpool from far off, and it not only dwarfed LeHavre; it was covered with a pall of dense dark smoke besides. "What is it?" I whispered to you, trying to imitate your trick of motionless voice. "Is the city on fire?"

You arched your head a little, which for you passed for laughter, and said, "That's coal smoke from the factories, and it pours out night and day."

The crowds, the noise, the bustle almost knocked me over. We came to a dingy hotel, with ragged lace curtains on the windows, and trash piled up near the steps. Two women lounged on the stairs; their painted faces and red-dyed hair served as their membership badges of the universal sisterhood.

"Give us a kiss, love," said one, looking right at me. I had to strain to understand the accent so different from the Welsh.

"Not you, guv'nor, you old fart, the young one."

My first instinct was to cast my eyes down, but you shoved me in the small of the back, hard, and my eyes came up. Boldly and insolently I looked at the first tart, with as rude a stare as I could muster.

"Oh, he's a bright penny, ain't he? Got no hair on him at all, yet."

"I bet he's got a few somewhere else. Eh, love? Want to come on and show me?"

We swept past the laughing women, and as your body brushed past mine, it shook with suppressed laughter.

In the faded brown room, I threw my head back and cried out, "Did you see them? Could you believe it?"

"Quiet," you said, "You're still on stage; these walls are thin, and you're going to disappear tomorrow, anyway. Now I'm going out to buy our passage before the bank closes."

Before I could protest, or ask exactly how I was going to "disappear," you slipped out of the room. In the small bathroom was a clawfoot tub. Oh blessed relief, a bath. I can actually take off my clothes, unbind my poor chest, and have a bath. A dozen girls in the Opera dormitories used one tiny bathroom. Even my mother, with her own room at the Opera, still shared a bath. I wondered if all the rooms had the same – if so, the English must be among the most well-scrubbed people on earth.

Then I looked the bathroom over, and remembered one unpleasant part of my Wales visits. English bathrooms had no bidets. How was I supposed to keep myself clean?

I put that problem off till later and threw the hateful cloth that bound me to the floor. Sinking into the tub, I rubbed soap all over, rolling in the water like a seal, until wrinkled and cold, I could soak no more. Then I sorted through my meager belongings, and stared regretfully in the mirror at my almost-shaven head. Without long hair to comb and braid, I didn't know what to do with my hands.

Curled up on the bed, trying to nap, a snare of longing for my mother wrapped itself around me. You wouldn't want me to write her, I knew, but her worry seemed to reach and tear at me so that no sleep came.

It was her greatest fear, that I would find you. Everyone in the Opera knew more about you than I. Whenever someone would bring you up, mentioning that they'd seen you in the scaffolding above the stage in a flash of sweeping black, or moving through the corridors only to disappear suddenly into a wall, I would follow them with questions, wanting to know everything, because my mother refused me everything.

Her faraway glances didn't fool me, either, when I grew old enough to recognize them for what they were. In one summer, it seemed, I learned about men. The line of a man's jaw or the slope of a shoulder sent tingles all through me. I knew what a woman's face showed when she looked at a man, and my mother's face said clearly to me that she pined for no "ghost."

One day, when I had just turned fifteen, when my legs smarted from the bruises she left from flicking them with her cane, when I refused to go to rehearsal, when her stares and sighs drove me murderous with irritation, I said bluntly, "He's my father, isn't he?"

She whirled around and her taffeta gown snapped like a rifle shot. "Who?" she said between gritted teeth.

"The man you're always looking out for in the corridors. The 'opera ghost.' The one you call the 'phantom of the opera.' Everyone calls him that now. "

She advanced on me with terrifying madness in her face, so that in my fear I barely felt the slap that jarred my head and dimmed my sight. "Never," she said. "Never even think it," and then cried with dry, strangled sobs. She looked like a child herself, huddled on her narrow iron bed in her mausoleum of a room.

I bathed my flaming cheek and never spoke of it again, never spoke to her of you again. You hung like a black shadow between us, and from that day on I decided to find out everything about you, to spy into every corner and lift every cobweb, to tease out your secret, the secret that must be so closely linked with all of hers.

I'm not going to write her, I thought, because I don't trust her. I don't trust her with you. Now that I'm with you, she has no reason not to hand you over. She wouldn't need thirty pieces of silver.

It was deep into the night when you came back to the hotel with armloads of packages. I jumped out of bed to look at them, and you showed me bread, wine, some sliced meat, and figs for dinner. The larger packages, though, contained two dresses, some underclothes, and a brown wig with a veil attached. The first dress was brown, gusseted at the front and trimmed with wine velvet; the second was a sober grey, like something a governess or housekeeper would wear. "What did you tell them when you bought this wig?" I wondered, but still speaking very quietly.

"That my sister had scarlet fever and had lost her hair."

"You had this whole route planned out, didn't you?"

"I always leave myself a back door," and you said no more about it. The meat was greasy and tough. We washed it down with wine and you said, "Get used to it. English food is barbarous."

Then you poured the rest of the wine for us, "Unless you want to drink it for breakfast," and when we finished, I lay back on the lumpy bed with limbs warm and heavy with wine and the coal fire. On the stained brown wallpaper, olive-colored hummingbirds stabbed idly at beige trumpet flowers, fading into mushy patterns as you dimmed the gaslights.

"You didn't get me any nightclothes," I said, half-drifting away. I thought you would say something facile like, you won't need them, but instead you looked stricken, because it was something you had forgotten, like a missed dance step that could throw off the whole performance. I rummaged through the pile. "No pantalettes, either?"

"Pantalettes?" you said blankly.

"You know, pettipants, for under the chemise?"

You shrugged as if to say, what for?

"Girls in the country don't wear them, but in Paris … It's all right. I'll just wear the chemise to bed, and I can do without pantalettes for now. It'll be less to wash, anyway." My head waved and my legs felt so heavy. I was used to a glass of wine with dinner, not half a bottle. Then something floated past me. "You're from the country, aren't you? From up on the Cote-du-Nord? I hear it when you speak. It reminds me of the Welsh."

"That's right. You have a good ear."

"What town?"

"You wouldn't know it; it was a pestilent little hole in the wall."

I opened some tissue paper and drew in my breath at the fine slipperiness of peach silk in my hands. "I've always worn cotton or linen," I said softly. "You didn't have to get this. It's almost too fine to wear."

"It suits your coloring," you said. "Look in the wrapping; there's a cotton one there for you, too."

I ran my hand over the fine Egyptian cotton, almost as delicate as the silk, and edged with tiny lacework. "You have such an eye for beauty," I said, and you really almost did smile this time; I saw it play on the corner of your mouth.

"It's gotten me into trouble before."

I shrugged as I turned and hung the dresses up. I never thought Christine Daae that beautiful, with her sticklike arms and glazed expression. When she started to get strange, and snuck from her bed at all hours of the night or morning, she grew white and gaunt. Jealousy flicked up in me.

"Tomorrow, then?" you said as you headed for the door once again.

"Where are you going now?"

"To my room, of course. Across the hall."

I shook my head, as much from confusion as this strange turn. "You have a room across the hall? Why?"

"Because there wasn't time to marry you today."

I thought back to your fierce pressure against my body, in the dark. "I think you've married me already."

"But not in the eyes of the concierge."

"The concierge thinks you're sleeping with a boy?"

"Don't try to outrun the fox, Meg. This will work if you let me do what I have to. I told the concierge you were my errand boy, that I'd sent you home, and that I needed a room for my fiancee, arriving late tonight."

"Lies on top of lies. At least you could tell me what lie I'm living today. How much attention do they pay here, anyway?"

"Not much, if you're generous with the shillings. But it's better if you do exactly as I say, and don't ask."

Your manner was a little cold as you withdrew. The glow of the wine had evaporated, leaving only a stiff leaden feeling.

"This would be easier without me, wouldn't it?"

You stood by the door, your face closed, saying nothing.

"Do you want me to go back to France?" I asked. "I won't leave unless you send me away. But I couldn't live with it, if something happened to you because of me."

You came over to me and buried your face in my neck.

Say it, I willed. Say it, say it. Say that you love me, but you didn't say it.

You broke from me, and from the smallest of the packages still on the sideboard, you produced a small box, and showed it to me. Within was a plain gold wedding band.

I caressed its roundness gently, over and over in a little circle. It wasn't Christine's, heavy with gems, but instead beautiful and pure and plain.

"This is for me?" I asked, unbelieving.

You nodded. I put the ring to my mouth and kissed it, saying, "I'll never take it off." Nor will I wear it around my neck on a chain, I thought, but some finger lighter than air touched my mouth and the words stayed inside.

You led me to the bed and I thought you would lie down too. I held out my arms to you and cried softly, "Stay, stay with me," but under the covers you tucked me, saying, "I'll be right next door, across the hall." You turned the gaslights down and I watched you slip out of the room into darkness.

Sleep was impossible. I ran through all the reasons you might have left me. I told myself you didn't want to attract attention; that you needed sleep, as did I, and that we would get very little together. That embarrassed me, that I might selfishly want you to stay and lose sleep, get clumsy, get us caught.

What if you never came back for me? The ring sat in its box on the table. I could sell it and find passage back to Paris. That would be the end of my life at the Opera, however. I couldn't go back there, not so humiliated. Mother might not even take me back in. And what if there was a child?

I sat up in bed and black shadows lunged out at me from the corners as I crossed my hands over my womb. I recalled how you had taken me in the pitch dark, as if we were both blind creatures, and after the first sharp short pain you filled me with delight - not so much delight in my body, but delight in my heart, because you clung to me, you rested on me, and because you let me stay with you.

Back and forth I rocked, fearing a child, wanting your child at the same time. How fitting, I thought, that I should end up like Mother, who married at a young age. Her husband went to the Beauce region of Quebec, looking for gold, and was gone for a year. Then Mother had me three months after the man that was supposed to be my father returned to Paris. She never said anything to me, she never did. Did she think I was stupid, that I wouldn't learn to count to nine? He returned to Canada right after I was born and never came back. The letter from the mining company told her that he had died of pneumonia.

At least he gave me a name. In France, your mother's husband was your father, even if he was gone for a year, or seven years. But any child in my womb would have no name for it, if you left me.

It's stupid, I said to myself. I'm being stupid. Why would he do all this, if not for me? Without me along, he could have been halfway across the Atlantic by now. Look how I've slowed him down already.

I woke exhausted to a cold, clear day. After my time as a boy, it felt odd to put on skirts once again. On the bathroom floor I saw the pile of rag strips that had disguised my chest, and I stuffed them in my bag. I'll have need of them if there's no child, I thought, and the cold fear stabbed at me once again that I carried a nameless baby.

At first I was afraid to speak, not wanting you to cuff or growl at me. In the cramped, bare government office, I stared at a picture of _Victoria Regina_ on the wall, and wondered why the English were so willing to marry people. I murmured something to you about it, and you said shortly, "For the fees." Several other couples with luggage at their side sat in line after us. They looked faintly embarrassed and talked quietly among themselves just as we did.

The bored magistrate heard our vows, stamped our papers, and grunted sarcastically as we left, "Shipboard weddings. Half of 'em don't last the passage. At least you made the effort. Most don't even bother anymore. I like to see an older gentleman with a young lady, myself. More stable, they are."

When we boarded the great ship later that day, the British officers inspecting tickets frightened me with their grim faces. You navigated our way through the paper-stamping men and I marvelled at your smooth English, and wondered what other languages you knew.

"You have to help me with my English, or I'm going to be lost. None of it sounds like the English I learned in Wales. They all have different accents."

"We'll speak the Queen's English from now on," you said. "Although in America it will all change."

_(To be continued)_


	4. Wretched Man

**Wretched Man**

I looked around our tiny stateroom, and wondered how you were going to fit into it. When you came after me through the door, you had to almost bend over by half to get in, but at least your head didn't scrape the ceiling. You carefully locked the stateroom door behind you and went to wash your face and hair.

The crisp sheets on the top bunk crackled as I ran my hands over them, and their blue blankets were pulled tight as skin. Everything was sharp and fresh, scrubbed clean. A small desk bolted to the wall had a sort of swivel chair attached to it, and another chair was wedged into the corner opposite the bunks.

A large mirror hung over the washstand, and there I saw you, cleaning the silver out of your hair with quick efficient strokes. Then you got out your long straight razor and mixed up some soap. I had never watched a man shave before. Such a risky business, the long slices with the blade over the tenderest portions of the neck. When you got to the wrinkled side of your face, you carefully edged around it with the straight razor; it looked like no hair grew there.

We stood near the deep center of the Liverpool Line's "City of Paris," on its way to New York City. The water line fell right below the porthole, and you closed the blue checkered curtain to close out the late afternoon sun. I had already strapped our new small carpetbags down so they wouldn't slide about.

This closet of a room would be our home for the next ten days. "Top or bottom?" I asked shyly, twisting my ring.

You took off your shoes and placed them carefully into the drawer under the bed, then stretched your long frame out on the bottom bunk, with only a few centimeters to spare on either end. "So that means I get the top?" I asked.

"It makes no difference to me," you said, and rolled over, turning your face to the metal wall of the cabin.

A small trickle of sweat ran down my head from underneath the wig. There was no wig stand, so I tried to prop it up as best I could when I took it off, but it still lay there like a flat, dead thing. I sat in the swivel chair and watched your shoulders rise and fall with deep regular breaths. In the mirror I caught a glimpse of my hateful head, made worse by the high velvet collar of my dress.

Water sloshed behind the curtain and cast wildly careening lights around the room. The floor swayed to and fro and I waited for the sickness to come, the sickness everyone talked about when crossing the Atlantic, but I stayed steady on my feet and no sickness came.

What made this black mood? Were you ill? I sat down carefully on the bunk and touched your shoulder. You made a little noise, halfway between a sob and a moan, and I shook you, this time.

"What's wrong? Are you seasick?"

No answer.

My hand rested on you, and underneath your shirt, I felt a fine tremor. At first I thought it was the humming of the ship's engines. You rolled over and you didn't look sick as you stared off at some point somewhere on the wall of the other side of our little metal cell.

"Please tell me if you're seasick," I asked again.

"I don't get seasick, even in storms. My stomach's resolutely unaffected by them."

"That's good," I said. "On Channel crossings I never got seasick." Thirty centimeters at most separated our hands, but it felt farther. In the dark, under the deepest cellar, I could pull you onto my breast with no hesitation, but here in the blue and steely light, I sat shy and motionless.

At this rate, I thought, it's going to be a long ten days.

I got up, and your gaze followed me, cold and predatory, like a cat watching a bit of fluff blowing across the garden. I'm not sitting here in this dress, I thought. The design was simple and plain, and so I could get it off easily myself. Clever of you to think of that, as I pulled it off and hung it in the closet. Then off came the corset cover, and the corset. How useful, it unties on the side. I stood cold and forlorn in my chemise with no pantalettes.

I'm going up into the top bunk, to pull the covers over my head. If you want me, that's where I'll be, I thought. But first I have to turn around. I have to go past your eyes to climb up to the top, or worse, I have to go past your closed eyes as they ignore me, or the back of your shaggy head shutting me out.

The full weight of what I was doing, of what I had done that morning, of what was ahead, pressed down on me like kilos of stones. The ship gave a lurch and I grabbed ahold of the closet doorframe to steady myself.

I went back towards the bunk, and you stared at me openly. There was an apprentice stage hand, a boy of about fifteen, who on his first day at the Opera dropped a sandbag on his foot as he stared at the dancers, especially me. That's how you stared, and instead of walking past you to climb up to the top, I sat down again on the low bunk.

I could wait. I was used to waiting.

You pulled the sheet back a little, and you'd unbuttoned your shirt. It was all the invitation I needed.

My eyes closed against your chest and the soft hair tickled my nose. Lightly, almost shyly, you put an arm on my shoulder and pulled me toward you. You smelled like shaving soap and a faint trace of cinnamon. Then you pushed me away from you, but not roughly. You just wanted to see my face, and you went all over it as if searching for something, but I couldn't tell what.

"My love," I said, finally.

You looked away as if I'd hurt you, and made little lip movements, as if some words were trapped there and couldn't get out.

"Why can't I call you 'my love?'" I asked.

Back on your back you flopped, staring at the wire mesh that held up the bed above us. "You don't deserve this," you said in a choked voice. "You're young, you're lovely, you're fresh. I'm a walking dead man, Meg. You're saddled with a corpse, a corpse who wants nothing more than to push himself into your flesh." Then you leaned your face away from me and said softly, half to yourself, "Wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?"

"If you're a corpse, then so am I."

You looked back at me, puzzled.

"Remember the words you said not so long ago? 'With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship?' It seemed unfair that I didn't get to say it too. Because it's how I feel."

A tear leaked out of the corner of your eye.

"One flesh." I put both my hands on your face, not bringing you forward for a kiss, just holding them there. "All your flesh, too. Please don't ever be ashamed to want me."

Then you kissed me, and I shut my eyes so nothing would be in the way of that kiss, nothing in between the smell and taste of it, nothing to distract me from the little sounds you made as your mouth moved around mine. We kissed a long, long time. The first time we had come together, you were hot and quick, but now you were slow, almost cool, as you teased one kiss after another from me.

Around and around your hands went, and in delight my hands explored you as well. All of you, so long and tall and warm, and what a marvel that you let me touch you.

I pulled your shirt off and saw your body for the first time, all ribbed with muscle and soft with hair. At your waist I found only a confusing barrier of flaps and buttons. You contained yourself until you could hold yourself in no more, so you opened the flaps and naked under the covers we slid.

Your mouth stayed on mine, breaking away only to breathe or shift. Then I cried out as you took me with movements dark, slow, and powerful, rocking like the waves themselves. It still hurt, but not as much as before, and all I could think was I'm allowed, I'm allowed. Deep from inside you a new motion started, expectant and eager, moving in rhythm with the sloshing of the waves.

The rhythm broke when you stopped and hesitated, then pulled away from me, and my heart sank.

I reached around you and tugged you toward me. With a tiny movement you retreated. "What is it?" I said. "What's wrong?"

You looked away from me, embarrassed. "A child … I wanted to avoid giving you a child. For your sake."

"No," I cried out. "Don't do that. Don't ever pull away from me like that. Besides, there may be a child already. From the cave."

Inside me you slowly softened, then slipped out altogether. You rolled over onto your side, facing the blank steel cabin wall.

"Oh, God," you said to yourself. "What have I done?"

If we hit an iceberg, I thought, that bunk above us could come crashing down. It would crush us. It couldn't hurt as much as this.

Your bare back trembled, layered with muscle but vulnerable too, speckled with brown moles.

"Why don't you want a child?" I said.

The sheet flew off me as you whipped around, pulling it with you. With a wild expression, you snarled, "Are you blind, girl? What if this obscenity were passed on to some poor unfortunate? Why would I want to inflict that on him, much less on you? Could you hold a face like this up against your breast?"

"I already have," I said softly.

Fits of temper didn't scare me. My mother had showed enough of them. All I had to do was wait, and they passed. Getting excited over them just made them last longer. So I stared coolly at you, even though my stomach churned with anxiety.

Panting, you looked away and pressed your head into the pillow. Cold and sticky, I rolled over and stared at the rough metal door across this closet of a room. What is he going to do if my courses don't come? Try to find an "angel maker" in America? They're all over Paris; I'm sure New York has them too. But never. Never, never, never. I'll fight him. I'll run away. I wrapped my arms around my stomach as water leaked out of my eyes, and a thin trickle of wetness went down my leg.

"I want you," I said to the metal door across the room in a voice thick with tears. "That goes for any child that would come, too. Or that has come already. The two go together."

I could feel you shiver on the other side of the bed.

"Even if its face looks like mine," you said, muffled by the pillow.

Over to you I slid.

"Especially if its face looks like yours."

"You can't mean that," you said. "My own mother would never touch me."

"Someone touched you. Someone had to change you and dress you. Someone had to wash your face and comb your hair. Someone had to nurse you."

Instead of saying anything, you buried your face in my breast, shaking and trembling. I stroked your hair and watched the moonlight move across the wall and soon you grew quiet, your breathing rhythmic.

The ache inside of me opened into a maw of emptiness and confusion. We were supposed to be husband and wife, one flesh. But why did you slip out of my flesh, with mine still on fire for you?

I went into the washstand and tried to clean myself as best I could, my body all tender and swollen, my heart pounding with desire. Instead of slipping back into my wet and soiled chemise, I pulled your shirt right out from under your arm, your sleep so vast and deep that nothing of you stirred, and I put it on.

After I washed and hung out my own garment, I went to the porthole, opened the curtains, and watched the purple sunset play over that almost infinite mass of black sloshing water, before sliding in the small bunk next to you. As the swollen ache in my flesh slowly leached away, I slept.

Thirst woke me up. It was dark, but the moon had risen and I knew that hours had passed. The full moonlight played on the water, and some of it crept over onto your face and the sloping line of your shoulder.

Sleep transformed you. If I had a candle, I could see better how the tense angle of your shoulders relaxed; how your jaw hung soft and loose instead of twisted and tight; how your hand lay open on the pillow. In the dim reflected moonlight, your beauty wrenched my heart.

But thirst won out, though. Over the washstand were two spigots. I couldn't remember which was salt and which was fresh, so I tasted the first experimentally, and then spat into the sink. Even after fresh water, the brackish taste stayed in my mouth.

An apple, I thought. That would take care of it. I saw you put some in your brown bag. I crept through the darkness to your stained khaki bag. I'll let you sleep, I said to myself, no need to bother you.

I pulled out an apple, a chunk of cheese wrapped in paper, and then my fingers bumped a small item that felt like leather, a small leather purse with a flap tied with a series of complicated knots. Inside was something hard. The ship must have changed course, for a long slant of moonlight through the porthole made you shine like silver in the bed.

The stagehand who dropped sand on his foot followed me like a puppy for weeks, and he showed me knots, how to tie them, and how to loosen them.

I worked away at the lacing, forgetting my hunger or your sleeping form, obsessed with curiosity. Finally the last knot slipped loose, and I reached around to find something hard and cold against my fingertips.

Inside the flapped pouch was Christine Daae's ring. And from across the room you stared at me with fierce, glittering eyes.

_(To be continued)_


	5. Skin to Skin

**Skin to Skin**

The ring glowed blue in the moonlight. With wasp-like speed you flew naked across the room to where I sat.

"The damnable and insufferable curiosity of women," you hissed. "What were you doing in there? Give that to me," and you snatched it out of my hand. Over me you towered, every hair crackling with anger, and the sight of your maleness shocked me as well as your temper. No statue or Greek vase in the Louvre could have prepared me for the fierce energy in your uncovered flesh.

I felt like cowering. I decided not to.

"What was I doing?" I said. "Looking for this," and I tossed the apple lightly up toward you, where it bounced off your stomach and rolled on the floor. "Or maybe some of this," and I got ready to heave the brick of cheese, but you held up my arm and your face lost some of its fire.

"Will you excuse me? I feel at a distinct disadvantage here," and you retreated to the bed to pull on your underdrawers, the ring grasped tightly in your fist.

"You might as well put these jewels away, too," I said, as I tossed the leather pouch over to you. As you reached to grab it, your half-buttoned drawers slid down your hips, and the pouch fell to the floor.

I watched you struggle with buttons and keep hold of the ring at the same time, and something inside me broke like a twig. In two long steps I advanced over to you and spoke in a cool, conversational tone.

"I'm hungry. I'm cold. My bottom feels like it's been rubbed with sandpaper. I go to find something to eat, but instead I find _that_," and I pointed to your clenched fist. "And is that the worst? No, the worst is that you _snap_ at me as if I were a disobedient child."

You opened your fist and looked at me, at the glimmering ring, and back to me again. Even in shadow the ring still faintly glowed, as if it had some odd life of its own.

I grabbed your free hand and put it up to my neck, squeezing your fingers into my skin. "Go ahead," I said softly. "You've shown you're capable of it. So just get it over with. Or let me live. But I won't live my life in fear of you. I won't let you bully me."

You slid your hand off my neck and squatted down to retrieve the little pouch. As you tucked the ring away I watched an entire battle play out on your face. Warring feelings twisted themselves this way and that. Your eyes followed me, black and reptilian, as if I were an insect singled out by your appetite.

Up against my neck your hands slid, almost gripping. You teased around my neck with your thick fingers, and I held my breath, waiting for the fatal squeeze. Oh, God, had I pushed you too far? Your grip turned to a rough caress, and panting as if you'd been running, you pulled your face into mine and kissed me wildly, deeply.

The ache down at the pit of me flared up, opening wide. Over me fell your cloak of sweet, rough madness, and you drew me right into it, and on that narrow moonlit bunk, I drew you into me.

Later I gasped, "You'll stay in me? You'll not pull away?" and you breathed from deep down in your chest, "Yes," and then we slid back and forth in time with the waves.

I heard wild cries, and, surprised, knew that they were mine. I rose up to match you strength for strength, until from far away came a ripple, next a closer flutter, and finally, right there on top of me, came a breaking wall of feeling that shook me into the bed. I collapsed into the soft center of a widening whirlpool of pleasure that opened, closed, opened again around you, only you, always you.

You looked down at me with an expression first quizzical, then delighted. Half faint, I saw every surge deep in my flesh reflected on your face.

"So that's what it's like," you whispered to yourself, and I didn't know what you meant, but it didn't matter, because the pulsing weight of the waters of the deep pressed all thought out of me.

You shuddered massively twice, three times, and a flicker of mind returned to me, afraid you would die, that we both would die under the onslaught. But we didn't die; instead, you clung to me like a drowning man, murmuring, "Thank you, thank you," into my neck.

I thought you would slide immediately into sleep, but you lay next to me, holding my side, taking me apart with your eyes, as if you had never seen a woman glowing from the pleasures of love before. I stroked the back of your neck and said softly, "I had no idea."

"You don't know what it meant to me, to see your face at that moment."

"I'm glad," I whispered. "I'm glad I made you happy."

I drifted down to rest upon the broad beach of your chest, rocking gently on the up-and-down waves of your breath, and the open circle of tenderness inside me stayed wide like a floodgate. We lay there quietly together, skin to skin, just breathing.

Then you gave a little shift, and I didn't have to see your face to know that restless thoughts moved through you like fish through the deep.

"I have to get up," you said.

When you returned, you brought several apples, a little pot of honey sealed with wax, and your long sharp knife.

"We should talk. I can tell you want to, that there are so many things you want to ask me."

"So many," I answered, still flushed with love. "But I can wait."

"That night of the fire … that night of _Don Juan Triumphant_ … you don't know what happened, of course. Do you want to know?"

"I want to know what you want to tell me," I said. "Is honey in bed a good idea? This is wonderful with the apples, though."

"I don't want to hurt you. I have so much blood on my hands already."

"It hurts me more to imagine."

"Very well," you said. "What can I tell you?"

"Why was Christine found wearing a wedding dress? And why do you have her ring?"

"It's ugly, Meg. Are you sure you want to know?"

"Yes. I do. I don't want to imagine it any more."

"Do you hate her?"

"No, I don't. She was my friend for many years, remember."

"So you feel kind to her, even now."

"I feel kind to everyone right now," I said. "I've never felt such happiness before. But yes, I feel kind toward her."

So you told me how you had the dress made for her, but couldn't bring yourself to openly ask for her hand. Then, after you took her by force down into the bowels of the Opera, you angrily thrust the dress on her, thinking you could make do what she had already refused. You told me of the ring, how you had kept it since the night of the Masked Ball, taking it out and turning it over and over in your hands, loving and hating it at the same time.

When she was all dressed as a bride, you gave her the ring, but placed it in her hand, waiting to see what she would do. She closed her fingers around it but wouldn't put it on.

"I think the only time it has ever been on a finger," you said, "was when she kissed me, to keep me from killing Raoul de Chagny."

When she kissed you. Then something odd overwhelmed me, and I felt her in the room, closer than when we shared a dormitory bed on cold nights, as close as if she lay right on top of my skin. As if she were in this bed, in this room, in your arms, or that she could have been.

You lay your head on my knee and put your arms around me. A drop of honey hit your shoulder and I wiped it off absently. You said softly, "It's a tale best told in your arms. Now do you hate her?"

"Why should I? I'm in this stateroom, not her." Then, after a few heartbeats, "Were you really going to kill Raoul deChagny?"

"I'm afraid I was."

"Until she kissed you."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know, really. I mean, the situation was plain. I wanted to kill him, and she didn't want me to. If she could have physically stopped me, she would have. She told me she hated me, that I'd lied to her and deceived her, and I had, it was all true. Then, she walked up to me and … you can't want to hear this, can you? It has to hurt."

"If it hurts too much, I'll tell you to quit."

"She wanted me to stop, to just stop. I wanted it to stop, too, all of it. I almost laid myself down face first in the water, just to make it all end. Then, it was as if a hand was laid on me, a hand I couldn't see or feel, and something broke inside of me. After that, I knew I couldn't force her anymore, or myself, for that matter. So I told her to go. Not because I didn't want her anymore, no … now look, you're crying."

"No," I winced, "I'm not. You wanted her, but you weren't going to try and make her, anymore."

"That's it, exactly. So when she came back, I thought, I've done it, I've won, she's come back on her own. Then she gave me back the ring, which was really hers anyway. She folded it into my hand as if it was the most precious thing in the world, and then walked away, dragging those heavy wet skirts behind her. I can still hear them scraping on the stone."

I held you against my stomach as you sat, cradling your head in my arms, shusshed you, and you wept a little, but nowhere near as deeply as you did that first night on my breast. Unspeakable cruelty, oh, unspeakable. Better she would have just thrown that cursed object in the lake. And now it's with us in this very room, like an albatross, dead and stinking.

"Why would she do that?"

"I don't know. Guilt, or confusion, or one last look at the freak in the cage before disappearing forever. But when I knew she was truly gone, I put the ring in my pocket and decided to live anyway."

"I don't understand that," I said. "I'm glad that you decided to live. But why do you keep it?"

"I wish I knew. When we get to America, I'm going to put it away, and I don't want you to ask about it, or look for it, or even think about it again. I never intended for you to see it or find it."

"So you wanted to deliberately hide it from me. That shames me. Give me one reason I shouldn't throw it in the Atlantic right now," and I pushed you away, suddenly angry.

"Meg … " you said, so forlorn I had to turn back to you.

"Well, I don't want to see it. And don't try to hide something that big from me again."

From the shadow where the moonlight didn't reach, you said, "You have no idea, the depths of what I'm hiding from you."

"Everyone has something they hide," I said. "I don't know who my father is, for example."

"Your mother told me she was a widow."

I sat up like a bolt, and the empty honey pot rolled onto the floor. "You knew my mother? All that business with notes, I knew she was your go-between, and I never believed in this 'ghost' business, but you knew her? Talked to her face-to-face?"

Confused, you said, "She never told you?"

The soft well-being after love was gone. "She never told me anything about you. Everything I learned of you, I learned on my own, by watching, or from … other people."

"She never told you how she found me, as a boy?"

"Nothing, not a word. So she knew you when you were young? Oh, how I hate her. All her sighing, her staring into corners," and as I pulled the sheet around my shoulders I started to cry.

"Do you want to know what happened?" and I nodded fiercely.

"My father was a peddler, in Brittany. My grandfather was going to kill him for dallying with my mother and giving her a child, and since he liked living and liked my mother well enough, I suppose, he married her. Then there was the unfortunate curse of my birth. My grandfather died, and my father left. My mother despised me, so at ten I ran away."

I started to protest, that your birth was in no way a curse, but you held up a hand.

"I joined a band of gypsies, looking for adventure. What I got was a cage, and a place as an exhibit in their freak show. They were outcasts from various gypsy tribes, felons who had joined with each other to put on a travelling circus. My face was worse then, far worse, raw and dripping. They kept me in a cage filled with straw, and beat me to make me take off the burlap bag they threw over my head.

"They had never been in Paris before, and were slavering like animals over the thought of more money than they'd ever dreamed. One night a group of girls came in, and I think my keeper was shocked. He was used to the rabble, the ignoramuses, but a troupe of schoolgirls undid him. The show was over, but he forgot to knot the rope that tied me to the bars at night. I strangled him with it and escaped. Your mother led me to the Opera Populaire, and showed me how to get into the cellars."

"I'm glad you killed him," I said. "Aren't you?"

"I used to be, although now I'm not so sure. But his death freed me, and without your mother's help, I would have died."

"My mother knew you as a boy. I knew she was a sphinx, but this … I used to ask her so many questions, and she would never answer. But she knew, she knew all along."

"I thought you knew, and that you followed me out of pity, because that seemed to be the only emotion I could inspire in a woman."

"Pity! I had always wanted to see you, when you slunk around the Opera. Then, when I did see you on the bridge on stage … No, not pity. Not at all." Then something occurred to me. Softly I asked, "Were you in love with my mother?"

Astonishment twisted your face. "Your mother? What an idea! She was like a sister to me. She showed me where the Opera kitchens were, and the prop rooms, and the costume shops. I think for her at first I was an interesting pet, and her secret. But when I was sixteen, I told her I was leaving, to board a ship for somewhere, anywhere. She cried and acted as if I were betraying her. I didn't understand it at all."

"I do. She was in love with you. I even noticed it myself, when I was old enough to pay attention to these things."

"In love with me? Impossible."

I let it rest. "Where did you go?"

"I signed on as a cabin boy on a merchant ship that went between North Africa and Europe, all around the Mediterranean. I travelled all over Northern Africa - Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, all the way to Egypt."

"But you came back to Paris."

"After ten years I was sick of humanity, sick of what I saw in Africa, sick of myself. I had been gone a decade. When I came back, there was your mother, now mistress of the ballet, and there were two little girls with her."

"Christine and I."

"Yes. I knew your mother had married while I was gone. At first I thought you were sisters, but then learned that she had taken in an orphan. Not that I paid much attention to ballet rats. I had my own preoccupation, carving out a little kingdom for myself in the deepest recesses under the Opera."

"Then one of the little girls grew up."

"Both of them grew up," you replied. Then something crossed your face, and you said, "Why do you not know your father?"

"The numbers don't add up. Mother married her husband, he went to Quebec for a year, and while he was gone, she got with child. He died soon after I was born. I don't know who my real father is." Then a black horror struck me, so powerful it threatened to make me throw up all the apples and honey I'd eaten.

"You swear you didn't love my mother?" I gasped. "What year did you leave Paris? What year? Tell me, I have to know."

"Calm down. What irrationality is this? Let me think, it was in the summer, the summer of 1853 that I left Paris for Marseilles. It took about a month to get there, but I wasn't going to get caught again. I learned to use a knife. You don't want to know about it."

I buried my face in my hands. "Oh, thank God. I was born in December 1854."

You pulled back as if a snake were suddenly thrown down between us, and then laughed loudly, crazily. I had never heard you laugh, and I jumped. You laughed until you choked, rolling over on your side like a boy who's pulled the most absurd practical joke, and at once I could see the boy in you, the boy you'd been.

"No," you gasped out, still rolling on your side. "I didn't love your mother."

"I don't think it's funny," I sniffed. "Do you realize …"

"Yes, I realize, and I too can count backwards from nine. I've read _Oedipus Rex_. It would make a perfect opera." You climbed back up and said firmly, "Meg, you were the only woman I've known, in the flesh."

"Impossible," I said. "Especially if you'd been on a ship. My mother would make us cross the street when sailors walked by. And then there was that night, the night after the Gala, when Christine stayed with you."

You looked away. Ah, ha, a nerve. "It's all right," I said. "It's different for men."

The room rang as you smacked the bedpost, hard. You flew from the bed and paced, really angry now, slipping into your rich Bretagne accent. "Do you have to pile it further on top of my head? Do you lead me out of the dark to convince me that I'm not a monster because of my face, only to shove me back in, because you think that I'm a monster of lechery? And not only a lecher, but a liar besides? That I would lie to you?

"Do you know how easy it is to buy flesh in Africa? Of course you don't. You're a girl who's spent her summer holidays in Wales. You and Christine were what, nine or ten when I came back? If you were poor girls in Alexandria, you'd have been sold to brothels around age eight.

"Boys used to expose themselves on the street, with their painted eyes and nails. Some were made into eunuchs, to give greater pleasure. You think Montmartre is full of prostitutes. You should have seen Algiers. It wasn't what I wanted. I didn't fear God, but I did fear infection, and above all I hated the ugliness of it all, the brutal squalor.

"You don't think I could have had flesh whenever I wanted it?"

You fell silent but kept pacing like a wild thing in a cage.

"Please," I said quietly. "Don't be angry with me. I believe you."

"But not about Christine."

"It's so hard to. Please understand. Mother and I found her right after dawn, in the corridor. We saw her face, her clothing. How she stared at us, as if in a dream. I didn't realize then, but now I do. How a woman could look that way."

You came back to the edge of the bed, your face in your hands. "Meg, I swear to you, I never entered her body, neither by force nor by her consent. The Vicomte de Chagny will have no strange eggs in his nest. Please don't ask me any more about it. There are some things that a woman should not ask a man. Please don't."

"Would you tell me if I did ask?"

A long silence, followed by "Yes."

"I'll lie for you, to keep you from being caught. I know I'm just as guilty as you. But I won't lie to you. I can live without you saying you love me," and you twitched as I said it, "but I can't live with untruth."

"I've lied out of sheer habit," you said baldly. "Untruth has been in my bones for so long."

"Somehow I believe you," and we both laughed a little.

The porthole was rimmed with pale grey dawn. I said lightly, "What lies do we tell today?"

"Surprisingly few. My name is listed the ship's manifest, and you are right under me as 'Mrs.' Don't tell people I'm a musician or that you're a dancer. Passengers, especially second-class ones, are a bored lot, and they'll want us to lighten their hours. They're mostly teachers, clerks, ministers - in other words, they have the brains that crave stimulation, but lack the money to regale themselves with the entertainments of first class.

"So it's best that we be something very dull to them. If anyone asks, I'm a stone mason, and you're a former lady's maid who's married up. Everyone will snub us and think we belong in third class, and no one will think we have a single interesting thing to say."

"A lady's maid?" I said, surprised.

"It's in the hands. A farm girl or laundress would have hands like lobsters. Yours are soft. It's believable that you would comb out hair and lace up corsets, but not scrub linens or hoe potatoes," and you ran your mouth around the tips of my fingers, making me shiver.

"Let me see your hands. They are rough, aren't they? From holding a quill, writing operas?"

"From carving, from digging, from building, from climbing up and down ropes."

I caressed your hand, running my fingertips around the thick muscle below your thumb. "So we just go up, mingle with the passengers, show up for meals, act normally?"

"Exactly."

"It's like hiding in plain sight, then."

"Not hiding," you said as you delicately lowered the sheet wrapped around my shoulders, and worked your mouth down my neck to the warm crevices beneath. "Living."

After a few minutes more of soft nuzzling I shifted, a little impatient. "Do you know what I'm thinking of now?" I asked.

"Ummm?"

"Coffee, about half milk, and very sweet. Biscuits with butter and jam. And I want you to tell me everything you know about America. About New York, and what we're going to do when we get there."

There was that look I'd come to know, the look of distant resolution that hid your thoughts like a curtain. "I'll tell you what we'll do when we arrive," you finally said. "First, I buy a violin, and you buy a pair of toe shoes."

I brushed your blue suit for you and we dressed. You adjusted your cravat, and I took your arm as we climbed up to the dining room. The cut-glass door swung open, flooding us with smells of fresh bread and bacon, and through the dining-room windows I caught a glimpse of the pounding swell of the gray ocean, its thin skin covering the fathomless surges of the deep.

_(Finis)_


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